“When his father told me on Thursday: Pour Martin, c’est fini, shivers ran down my body.” Dieter Leenders, the manager of volleyball club Maaseik, leaves no doubt about it: the fact that Martin Perin’s career as a top volleyball player is over has also hit the club hard. The 21-year-old libero collapsed during a match last Sunday due to cardiac arrest – his second in a year and a half. A defibrillator saved his life. On the advice of a team of cardiologists, he is now saying goodbye to top sport.
“Life is the most important…,” Perin wrote in a message on the club’s website. “I have been very lucky to have been able to turn my passion into a profession and I am very proud of what I have achieved. (…) I have always worked hard for my dreams. Some came true and were fantastic moments, others will never come true, like playing in Italy. But this is the right decision.”
Cause unknown
“It is a decision that the cardiologists have made,” says Perin’s manager, Wout Wijsmans. “A year and a half ago, after his first cardiac arrest, they brought Martin to Aalst. Last Sunday he ended up in the Citadelle Hospital in Liège. The doctors put their heads together this week, exchanged all results and performed additional tests. Their conclusion was that it would be better for him to quit top-level sports.”
The medical team has not determined the exact cause of the cardiac arrest, which makes it impossible to prevent a recurrence in the future. “It is not the case that top sport is the cause of the problem,” says Wijsmans. “But putting your body under mental and physical stress, training for four to five hours every day… doesn’t promote it. Martin is still allowed to play sports, just not at the highest level and not at full speed every day.”
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Volleyball was central to the life of the 21-year-old libero and that of his family (his brother Pierre, two years younger, plays at Borgworm, his father is the chairman, ed.). “And that is now being taken away from him. Of course that is hard. He knows that quitting is better for him, but that doesn’t mean it’s easier to do so. Martin is on a rollercoaster of emotions: at times he is very sad, at other times very angry… It will take time to process this. But hey, this is just the harsh reality of life.”
Dream away
Although he was only at the beginning of his career, the talented Perin was considered one of the best liberators in Belgium. He seemed ready to make a name for himself internationally. “He also had the right attitude, the suitable character and the ambition,” says Wijsmans. “Martin was almost the perfect combo, he had everything to make it. It doesn’t happen often that you find that in one player.”
According to Maaseik manager Dieter Leenders, besides being a sporting event, it is “first and foremost a human drama. He sees his dream shattered.” Perin, who negotiated a contract extension with Maaseik, has played for the Limburg club since 2021 and was also part of the national team. So now he has to look for a different future.
